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Monday, April 4, 2011

Insidious (2011) functions best if you pretend that it's a sequel to The Entity. Just imagine that James Wan was making this brokeass movie somewhere out in the Valley only to have Barbara Hershey show up one day at the craft services table to decide that she wanted to be in it, systematically taking more and more lines from Rose Byrne and ingratiating herself to Leigh Whannel. Good job, Barbara. You never let us down.

I also think it will help any Insidious viewing party to know that Patrick Wilson used to be my neighbor in Brooklyn and he is a kind and lovely man with the voice of an angel and triceps worthy of a men's magazine.

At its best, Insidious feels like getting felt up during a field trip to Disneyland's Haunted Mansion when the cars keep breaking down. It's atmospheric and full of macabre glee. Joe Bishara's score is fantastic. At its worst, this movie is blatanly riffing on Poltergeist - replacing JoBeth Williams with Patrick Wilson. In today's landscape of crappy movies that hate their audience, I think we can all agree that there are worse crimes than competantly ganking a classic. I live for moments when it becomes obvious from watching a film that the people making it actually enjoy movies. Insidious is such a film. Go see it.